Three days after my wedding to Lin Yuan, the Marquis of An Ning, I returned to my parents' home. At the family banquet, my half-sister A Ru couldn't stop vomiting. The doctor diagnosed her as pregnant. A Ru would rather die than name the man who had fathered her child, and my father was so furious he ordered her beaten to death. My husband rushed forward and held her tight, shouting at my parents, “The child is mine!” He said that the first person he noticed in the household all those years ago was A Ru. It was a pity she was a concubine's daughter and couldn't marry him. The pair of star-crossed lovers wept bitterly before me. In front of the whole family, my aunt threatened to take her own life, and A Ru was sent to the marquis's residence in a small sedan chair. She thought a life of wealth and splendor awaited her, never realizing what it meant to be a man's concubine.
